Storms
by Nastrandir
Summary: DA:I. At Adamant Fortress, Hawke and Fenris discover that their alliance with the Inquisition may come with a cost.
1. Chapter 1

_Another foray into DA:I. While this does take place with the some of the same characters and settings as my previous Hawke stories, it can also be read entirely on its own. While it does take some liberties with the story and setting, it's not a true AU. I've also upped the rating for this one. As always, Bioware owns nearly everything. Reviews are always welcome.  
_

 _ **Storms**_

 _ **Part One**_

"You know," Varric said, and brushed sand out of his collar. "This might not be the best idea we've ever had."

"Wonderful," Hawke responded. "And here I thought I'm meant to say things like that while you reassure me that I'm just being cynical."

"Cynical, realistic. Whichever," he said absently.

Days and days back out in the middle of nowhere, he thought, the mornings brittle and windy and the afternoons searingly hot and the nights clamping down with cold and damn it but he was actually missing Skyhold. The desert was uselessly empty, wind-raked dunes sloping up against weather-pitted ruins.

Weeks ago they had found the tower, a disappointing funnel of crumbling stone perched perilously on the edge of an outcropping. There he had seen – they had all seen – that it was as bad as they'd thought, or feared, or desperately hoped it wouldn't be. The air crackling as they had seen Wardens bound and chained to the floating, sliding shapes of demons and the vicious awareness that _this_ was what Corypheus wanted with them.

Wanted them shackled and locked into forced loyalty.

And now Varric was _here_ , still surrounded by nothing but sandy wasteland and the prickling knowledge that they'd be finding their way to the Warden fortress, Adamant. That he was sitting in the middle of a damn war camp, wondering just how it had all spiraled away from him and gotten this big this fast.

Except, some treacherous thought prodded, it had been already, since Haven, since the Conclave.

Since he'd stood in front of a stone archway in the Vimmark Mountains and remarked to Hawke that they were far enough out of Kirkwall that whatever the Carta wanted, it'd better be good and worth it.

"Here," Hawke said, and pushed a wineskin into his hands.

He mumbled a thank-you and tipped it up, the wine tangy and too sweet. The wind had picked up again, gusting hard enough to ripple the tents.

Whenever his thoughts drifted, he could hear it, the sound of too many people around them. Inquisition scouts and soldiers carting messages and carrying weapons and shouting orders. Someone else grousing about supper, and one of Cullen's younger soldiers worrying out loud that he still didn't know where the damn blacksmith was holed up.

On one side, he could hear Hawke, her voice teasingly soft as she said something to Fenris, the elf's clipped tones following in response. On the far side of the fire he was aware of Sera and then Blackwall, laughing raucously at whatever she'd said.

Footsteps crunched against the sand, and he looked up in time to see Cassandra, as windblown as the rest of them, her eyes narrowed.

"Seeker," Varric said, and summoned up a tired grin.

She nodded. "Varric." She glanced past him, her gaze landing on Hawke. "Champion, if I might borrow you?"

Hawke sighed and dragged herself upright. "I'm coming. Only if you promise to never call me that again."

"I'll try to remember," Cassandra said, and Varric could've sworn she almost smiled.

Varric shook the wineskin at Fenris. "It's awful, but it's one of only a few options."

The elf straightened up, his expression sharpening. "You're still talking about the wine?"

"Hah. Very funny."

Fenris tugged the wineskin out of his hand. "You've never been out this far before?"

"No. It's desolate, unsettling, empty, and above all, boring. Not my kind of place."

"Boring," the elf said, the flicker of a smile curving his mouth. "That's a complaint, is it?"

"Normally it would be."

The evening turned brittle, grey clouds rushing overhead and the wind dragging the fire flat. He got through half the wine, and the elf drained the rest. Days, he thought, bare days until they'd be standing in front of Adamant, and wondering just how to make it work. Nightfall brought Hawke back, her expression vaguely bemused.

She settled herself indolently beside Fenris. "How do I get people to stop asking me for advice?"

"Give them really bad advice the next time they ask," Varric answered genially. "They'll stop after that."

"Great idea."

"It works, I promise."

"I'm sure," Hawke said, smiling.

She looked tired, Varric thought, blue eyes bruised with shadows beneath the dark mop of her hair. Still, he figured they _all_ looked tired and filthy, this far out into the sand.

Unbidden he thought of it, that day in Kirkwall, that day that'd been just like any other, or started like any other. He'd heard her name, bits and pieces about her, that she had a sister, that they'd come stumbling in from Ferelden on the coattails of who knew how many other refugees. That she'd scrabbled and fought and talked her way through a year with that grimy bastard Meeran and come out still kicking.

He'd found her in Hightown, and he remembered the way she'd looked at him, half a smile and all curiosity.

He blinked, realised he'd missed something, and said, "Sorry, what?"

Hawke grinned. "I hope wherever you are right now, it's more comfortable than here."

"I wish." He shook his head. "I just – can't keep myself out of my own thoughts. Sounds foolish."

"No," Fenris said. "It doesn't."

Hawke groaned. "You both look as dismal as each other. I'm going to find some more wine and my cards, and then I'm going to fleece you both ragged."

"I have a deck right here," Varric protested.

"I don't trust yours. You always seem to win with it."

"I'm wounded, Hawke. So very hurt."

"Sure you are." She turned, kissing the elf's cheek and then the corner of his mouth when he smiled slightly.

The memories surged up again, tangled and from so damn long ago and Varric wondered why he was _still_ mired in them. Because it was easier, he supposed, to remember the start of things when you had no idea how you were going to end it, any of it.

He remembered that evening in The Hanged Man, the air riotous with conversation and how he'd taken himself back into his rooms, a tray in one hand and a curl of parchment in the other. How Hawke'd come careening in before he'd even gotten halfway through dinner, trailed by the elf they'd struck a tentative bargain with days ago. How the elf had watched him through hooded, wary eyes, his whole frame coiled as if he was a terse hairsbreadth from fleeing or attacking or both.

" _Sure,"_ he'd said, and grinned. _"I remember you. The elf who glows and doesn't know how to smile. Oh, and something about you having a Tevinter magister on your ass."_

" _I, ah,"_ the elf'd said, and frowned. _"Right."_

Something hit the ground beside his knee. Glancing down, he found himself looking at Hawke's deck of cards, battered and fading and stacked on the sand. "I'm dealing, am I?"

"You're dealing." Hawke ensconced herself beside Fenris again. She leaned forward, dropping a wineskin between the three of them.

Varric scooped the cards up, fanning them between his hands. The tension at the base of his spine eased, and he found himself smiling. "Alright. What's your first bet, Hawke?"

* * *

Under the relentlessly cloudless bowl of the sky the desert unraveled, high dunes sweeping up to the blurred line of the horizon. Hawke sat perched on the flat dusty slab of a boulder, her legs swinging above the slight dip to the sand below. Somewhere behind, she could hear the low rumble of conversation, the soldiers as they settled in for the last stretch of the afternoon.

Footsteps scraped against the rock behind her. She turned, leaning back so she could see Fenris, his frame coiled somehow, as if he was hovering.

"May I join you?"

She blinked at him. "Of course. You don't need to ask, you know that."

Fenris settled himself beside her, all maddeningly graceful motion. He was barely sweating, she noticed sourly, his arms bare and the heavy fall of his hair fringing the back of his neck.

"You like the heat," she remarked lightly.

"Well. I am comfortable in the heat."

"Least one of us is."

"You said you wanted to go somewhere warmer."

"Hah." She prodded his shoulder idly. "I was agreeing with you, as I recall."

"Fair enough."

"What is it?"

His gaze skipped away from her face, taking in the rolling sand and the rocks and then back to whatever it was he suddenly found fascinating between his feet. "You are avoiding me," he said, very quietly. "You have been for a few days."

Hawke winced. "I'm sorry."

"I mean," he added hurriedly. "You sleep beside me. Most days you eat beside me. Some days you spar with me. But you're not there. If I need to -"

"I know what you mean."

They were both, she thought wryly, sometimes still not very good at navigating the awkward complexities of each other. _No_ , she thought, almost smiling, they _had_ been, for a while, a long while, in Kirkwall, where they both knew the city and its rhythms and how the pieces of it fit together.

Where it was easy enough for one or both of them to step back. Where he had stayed most nights at her estate, but she knew – understood, painfully – just how much he needed sometimes to gently decline, or instead ask her to his mansion, to be reminded that even the smallest and simplest of choices was his as much as hers. Where she had learned that, regardless, he enjoyed being surprised – _pretending to be surprised -_ by her company. When sometimes he did the same in return, and she would amble out of the kitchen at home and find Bodahn opening the door to him, and both of them would laugh or smile or shrug awkwardly as if they had never pretended to fool each other that way before.

"I wasn't trying to avoid you," Hawke said. "I just – we're surrounded by so many people. All day. Every day."

"Yes."

"Sometimes I'm selfish."

"I understand if you want to be alone," he said haltingly.

" _No_ ," she said, startling herself with the vehemence in her own voice. She reached for him, closing one hand over the back of his. "No. I'm stuck in my own thoughts."

Fenris shifted closer, the tilt of his head intent and listening.

"I'm scared we'll fail. I'm scared _I'll_ fail. I'm scared I'll get you hurt. I'm scared I'll," she said, and stopped. The rest of it, unspoken and jolting, floated between them. "Ever feel like your luck's about to run out?" She blurted the words out, raw and uncertain.

"Too many times," he said, the ghost of a smile flitting across his mouth. "It hasn't yet though."

Hawke laughed unsteadily. "That's cheerful."

The wind keened, tugging at the loose ends of her hair. Far away, she could see the slopes of the sand, blurred. Dark shapes seemed to rise up out of the dunes, and she wondered if it was some trick of the heat and the distance, or if she was looking at towers, or the steep rises of cliffs.

Wordlessly, Fenris curled an arm around her, urging her closer. Burying her face against the crook of his shoulder, she felt the tension seep away. When he shifted so that he was sitting behind her, his legs around the outside of hers and his arms firmly around her waist, she found herself laughing.

"You know," Hawke said teasingly. "We're sitting on an outcrop right in front of half a war camp."

"I don't care," he murmured into her ear.

She turned her head, her lips brushing the raised lyrium that traced the inside of his arm. "I've been sweating hideously since I woke up."

"I don't care about that either."

"I'll think of _something_ that will annoy you."

"I'm sure you will."

* * *

The tent walls rippled with the wind, incessant and thrumming. Hawke buried her head under her arm and swore. For long moments she glared at the tent flap, trembling and lanced with moonlight. Eventually she gave up, sitting up and scrubbing one hand across eyes that felt gritty with sand.

"Hawke," Fenris said, close enough that he was breathing against the side of her face.

She jumped, and found herself laughing. "Oh, Maker. I didn't hear you."

His arm circled her waist, bare and warm. "Are you alright?"

"What do I know about attacking a fortress?"

"Very little," he said drily, and kissed her neck, his lips finding the flutter of her pulse. "Which is why you will be standing behind the Inquisitor's troops while _they_ attack the fortress."

"They'll know we're coming. They _have_ to know we're coming."

"Yes," he said, and mercifully did not try to convince her otherwise.

She clasped the back of his hand, sliding her fingers between his. "If Corypheus is there, I honestly don't know what I'll do. Aside from panic, I mean."

Fenris chuckled softly. " _If_ he is there, we will confront him. If he is not, we will discover him later."

"I love it when you're stubbornly optimistic." She leaned back into the solid warmth of his chest.

He shifted slightly, so that his chin was on her shoulder. "Because it happens so rarely?"

"You said it, not me." She felt rather than heard his answering laugh. "Wonder if he remembers us."

"I'm sure you will find the occasion to remind him, regardless."

"Oh, yes. Absolutely. _Corypheus, my old friend. Stay there for a moment while I humbly beg your attention to remind you just who we are and why you don't like us._ " She swallowed. "Right before he slaughters me horribly."

His arm tightened around her. "You killed him last time. That sways the odds your way somewhat."

"We killed him." She rested the side of her head against his. "I'm sorry. I'm finding I can be busy during the day. I can talk to the blacksmith, go over plans with Cassandra, sword drill, anything."

"I understand."

"Well, yes, but you shouldn't have to listen to my thousand and fourth terrified worry about Corypheus."

"A thousand and four terrified worries," he echoed wryly. "You've been counting?"

"Listing. In excruciating detail."

He tipped them both sideways onto the blankets, his arm still around her. She shifted over, her hands bumping his chest, skimming over the lyrium marks. She knew them - _and him -_ as well as she knew her own skin, the way they swirled across him, the way they mapped out the fierce drum of the blood beneath. She traced between them, seeking the warmth of his skin, of _him_. When she leaned up to kiss him, she misjudged the distance and ended up smacking her forehead against his chin.

"Sorry," she managed through sudden, breathless laughter.

"I can forgive you," he replied solemnly.

"You'd better," she said, before Fenris kissed her silent.

She let her eyes close, losing herself to the movement of his mouth and the way he tasted of heat and the wine they had shared and _Fenris_. She rolled on top of him, her hands flat on his chest. She slid down him, her mouth finding heat and hard muscle and the uneven thud of his heartbeat beneath. When she brushed the jut of his hipbones with her lips, he shivered. One of his hands tangled in her hair, tightening when she finally took him into her mouth, slowly. She felt the way his hips rolled and then stilled. She smiled, silently enjoying the familiar way he often tried to keep himself motionless, _tried_ to last her out until he gave in, his back arching.

"Hawke," he mumbled, sounding strangled.

She laughed and eased away from him. Gracelessly, she clambered back up until she was straddling him, too feverishly aware of how he felt against her. He grinned and moved before she could, flipping them both so that she was beneath him, the breath rattling from her chest.

"Not fair," she protested.

He kissed her again, plying her lips apart with his tongue. Slowly – and probably in teasing retaliation, she was certain, because she knew him too damn well – he kissed his way across her stomach. His lips ghosted across her scars, over the one that arced just beneath her ribs, and the other, wider one that carved over the top of her leg.

When he lifted one of her legs up over his shoulder, she shuddered. He took his time with her, gentle at first until he had her writhing, his mouth buried between her thighs.

Latching her hands in his hair, she said thickly, "You're evil. You know that?"

She felt him smile. "So you have said before."

"And now you're talking," she mumbled. "Why are you talking?"

"Because _you_ were talking."

He moved, and for a desperate, frustrating instant she felt nothing but the night air against her skin before his body covered hers. She arched up under him, one arm locking around his shoulder and her other hand guiding him into her.

She fell apart first, one of his hands sliding between them and stroking until her climax shattered her. When she cried out, he stifled her with his lips until she laughed. When he groaned, emptying himself into her, she tugged his head down against her shoulder, muffling him. They stayed like that, twined together, Hawke's fingers sliding through his hair again and again.

"Fenris," she said, almost silently.

"What is it?"

She shifted so that she could see him, all moon-washed skin and silver hair. She could see the way he was looking at her, his face full of longing. Aching, she said, "Nothing."

* * *

Adamant Fortress swelled on the horizon, hazy amid whirling dust. Every time Varric looked up and through the wind-tugged lines of the tents, he found himself staring at it, at the blurry angles of the walls and wondering just how toweringly impassive it would look if you were standing on the ground right in front of it.

The whole camp was quieter, he'd noticed, since the fortress had grown and grown in the distance, close enough now that he could roughly see the spires of it. The jangle of horses trotting past and pages hefting armour to the smithy and messengers flitting past the tents seemed oddly subdued. Long wandering moments took him past the cooking fires and eventually around the flat patch of dust that currently passed for the sparring ring. Other nights he'd happily stayed with the others and gotten indolently tipsy, arguing absently with Sera and Bull or reminding Cullen that it was actually alright to sit down and stop for half an evening.

Tonight though his thoughts were unsteady, not settling. He was too aware of the siege engines, angular and silent. He'd seen them, during the daylight, hauled and pushed across the rock, and tried not to think about what it would mean.

Scraps and fights and accidental brawls were one thing, he thought. Even desperate scuffles that turned into battles – _Haven_ , he thought painfully – he could reword in his own head and make it seem easier or simpler. Except, he concluded ruefully, that it wasn't simple right now, and it probably hadn't been then, just easier to mask.

His steps took him past the dicing tables and there he let Maxwell coax him into one game, just the one, he promised. Three rounds later Blackwall joined them, sitting heavily.

Blackwall eyed the spread of the dice, smiled and said, "Looks like you're getting trounced, Maxwell."

"As always," the Inquisitor said forlornly.

"Hey, you asked me," Varric retorted.

"Your friend Hawke was asking if you wanted to join her," Blackwall said.

"She alright?"

"Nothing urgent, she just caught me as I was walking past. She's off behind the smithy. With her," he said, and hesitated the way Varric'd seen Andraste knew how many people falter slightly, wrestling with just _how_ to describe the elf. "With Fenris," Blackwall settled for muttering.

"Thanks." He pushed himself upright. "Good luck thrashing the mighty leader of the Inquisition if he's still up for more punishment."

"I'm right here," Maxwell muttered.

"We know."

He found them just behind the sloping shadows of the smithy, a lantern and a wineskin between them. They were sitting together, tangled, Hawke's legs slung across the elf's and his hands crossed over her knees. Whatever the elf murmured made her smile, then grin, before she grabbed his collar and dragged him close enough to kiss him lightly.

Briefly Varric paused, wondering if he'd just intruded. He understood how painfully cramped the war camp was – how even _Skyhold_ seemed to be, some days – and how gallingly tough it could be to find some small space to just breathe and be left alone without a messenger or a recruit or sometimes even a damned friend blundering in.

"Varric," Hawke said, and motioned him closer. She swung her legs off the elf's and straightened up.

"Where's your monster of a dog?"

"Being gallantly fought over by Cullen and Iron Bull. They like her." She frowned. "Everyone likes her. Sometimes I'm not sure if I should feel jealous or supportive."

"Go for a bit of both. Keeps you on your toes."

She rolled her eyes at him before reaching for the wineskin. "This is going to sound ridiculous, but I think I almost preferred it when we _didn't_ know what we were walking into."

"Oh, yes," Fenris muttered. "That was just how we got to be pleasantly surprised when the Knight-Commander starting turning into red lyrium."

Hawke snorted. "Surprised, I'll give you. Pleasantly, not so much."

"I know what you mean," Varric said. "I keep looking at that damned fortress and wondering whether we'll all be walking away from it."

Fenris smiled lopsidedly. "And you both seem to think _I'm_ the only who assumes bad outcomes."

"You do," Varric retorted.

"It's so big," Hawke said quietly.

"We'll make it out," Fenris said.

"That a wager, elf?"

"I thought you never wagered me," Fenris responded blandly.

"Only because of that time you proved damn slippery at cards. I've never worked out how you did that."

* * *

The fortress was full of echoes. Steel and footsteps and the whine of magic, searing the air. Somewhere overhead, something heavy thumped into the walls again, the ground beneath Hawke's boots trembling.

The stone warren of the fortress tasted stale inside, the air heavy with grit and sand. Long hours had taken them in through the main gates, Hawke's nerves jangling. Too quickly they had been rushed, the Wardens neither stopping nor listening, and she had grimaced and unsheathed her sword in response.

Now, flanked by torchlight and the Inquisitor's allies, she wondered – terribly, painfully – how long it might take. How they were going to carve their way through the rest of the twisting stone passageways. How they were going to track down Erimond after the bastard had run, taking himself after the Warden-Commander with his staff spitting fire. How they were going to dredge something approximating hope from the chaos they had walked into.

Hawke pressed her shoulders against the wall and exhaled. Beside her, Fenris was rigid, his markings fading as he lowered his sword. He was as much of a mess as she was, she thought, blood streaking his hair and coating the side of his ear, his armour scuffed.

"Here," Cassandra said, and flung her a waterskin.

She drank, sluicing away the dust and the acrid thick taste in her mouth. She passed the waterskin to Fenris and eyed the blood-matted side of his head. "You're hurt?"

"It's not mine."

"Good." She grinned mirthlessly. "Maxwell. Tell me someone knows where we're going?"

The Inquisitor snorted. "You mean you don't want to get lost in here?"

He was uncertain, she saw, and he had been since the gate had crumpled inwards, the edges of it crackling with flame. Since they had seen the air above the courtyard shimmer, showing the fleeting edges of _something_ Erimond wanted desperately to bring through from the Fade. He was hiding it, she knew, behind the brash look he still had stuck on his face and the way he had one hand clamped around his sword.

"I'd rather not," she said genially.

The Inquisitor smiled lopsidedly. "We get this door open, we'll have a clean run up to the battlements."

"It'll be exposed," Cassandra said.

"Yes."

"You chase Clarel," Hawke said flatly. "I want Erimond."

The Inquisitor nodded. "Alright."

The door ahead shivered, shaking in its frame as the Inquisitor's soldiers slammed into it again. Watching, Hawke adjusted her stance until she was shoulder-to-shoulder with Fenris, Varric on her other side.

The door swung wide, crashing hard against the wall. Hawke breathed in, steadying herself. The air was freighted with the choking reek of smoke, coiling up on either side of the stone walkway in front. Fenris moved first and then she was following him until her pace matched his. The din of battle assailed her first, rapid steps taking her across the walkway. Overhead, something shifted against the clouds, huge and winged.

"Well," Hawke said, gazing up. "You did say the bastard has a dragon now."

"Doesn't mean I like being right about it," Varric muttered from somewhere behind her.

The dragon was vast, slabbed with muscle and sweeping its way towards the battlements, jagged jaws dropping open. Steeling herself, Hawke gauged the distance to the battlements.

"Alright?"

"Right here," Fenris said.

"Then let's go."

* * *

There were some days, Varric reflected, when everything seemed to go so lurchingly sideways that he wondered why he'd dragged himself awake in the first place. Which was how, he supposed, that he'd found himself hurtling across a wide stone bridge with a damn dragon arcing through the air somewhere above them and close to half a dozen demons still trailing them.

Through skeins of smoke he could see Clarel, and then Erimond, both of them hurling spells swift and vicious enough at each other that the stone chimed with it.

Varric turned, his hands settling on his crossbow again. Cassandra bolted past him, shield down and the Inquisitor following. Briefly he saw Hawke – moving too fast, he thought bleakly – as she wove her way past him.

Fenris was paces behind her, his whole frame shimmering, the lyrium markings blazing when he halted. His sword swung up, hewing into the filmy dark shape of a demon.

Overhead, the dragon roared, the sound of it shaking Varric to his core. He whirled, aware suddenly that they were all too damn spread out, him and the elf blocked off by the demons as they surged forward. The dragon slammed down onto the bridge, wings unfurling. Its jaws gaped, its teeth flooding with crackling red flame. Somewhere ahead, someone shouted a warning. He heard Hawke answer, or try to, her voice gone thin and breathless. The dragon's bulk came surging down onto the bridge again, the stone trembling.

"Oh, _shit_ ," Varric muttered.

The wings clapped down, leathery and rippling. The dragon spun, the thick coil of its tail sending Cassandra to her knees.

The bridge was shaking, and he could feel it underfoot, the stone threatening to come apart.

"We need to move!" He settled Bianca against his hip and fired, the bolt embedding in the red expanse of a demon's throat. It collapsed into vivid sparks, hissing. Edging back, he tried shouting for the others again.

They couldn't hear him, he knew – he could damn well barely hear himself, above the clamour of the dragon and the way the stone was grinding – but even so he was shouting for them, for the Seeker, for Maxwell, for _Hawke_ to get away.

The dragon crashed into the bridge again, its head snapping back when someone – he tried to pick out who but there was smoke, too much of it – threw a spell at it, engulfing its head in white light. He heard it before he saw it, the great groaning weight of the bridge as it shuddered. Shrieking, the dragon launched up into the sky again, its clawed feet driving against the gaps in the stone.

The bridge seemed to shiver before it broke apart, more than half of it crumbling, collapsing down into the darkness beneath.

"Oh," Varric said, almost mouthing the word. " _Hawke_."

Someone hurtled past him – _Fenris_ , he realised, and the idiot was going for the ragged edge of the stone that was left.

Desperately Varric took off after him. Each step shocked the breath from his chest too fast and he was horribly aware he was close to exhausted. His feet skidded on blood or water or both. Stumbling he tried to right himself, one hand unusually clumsy on Bianca. Somewhere – _past the ruined edge of the bridge, impossible, fucking impossible_ – he saw the livid green burst that he knew was jolted into life by the Inquisitor's mark, the damnable thing that was lodged deep in the kid's hand.

"Fenris! Damn you, Fenris, stop. _Stop_." He reached for the elf's elbow, his fingers grazing against leather. When the elf's markings flared, blue-white and blinding, he let go, staggering back. " _Fenris._ "

The elf froze, shoulders rigid, gazing down over the broken edge of the stone.

"She's not," Varric said, and tried again. "They're not there. There was – you saw the light?"

"Yes."

Varric waited until the elf's markings had dimmed slightly. "That was Maxwell. At least, I think it was. He – the mark on his hand, you saw it."

"And that means what?"

The elf was looking down at him now, predatory and watchful and something cold crawled up Varric's spine.

"It means," Varric said, and fought for the words. "I don't know quite what it means. But it means he opened a rift. Or something."

"Or something."

"Will you stop _looking_ at me like that," he snapped.

"Like what?" the elf demanded, his tone goading, and part of him understood.

The elf was angry – so was he – and the elf was scared, and his own pulse was still galloping, his thoughts almost flat with panic. He'd seen the stone collapse, the whole heavy weight of it coming crumbling down, and he _knew_ you couldn't live through that. Not with the fall, and the distance. Not with the rest of the huge blocks as they had come slamming down afterwards.

Varric shook his head. "Let's just – come on, we need to get away from the edge."

The elf's shoulders slackened, and he nodded silently. Inching away, Varric kept his gaze on the elf, on the way he kept staring at where the rest of the bridge had been. Varric wondered briefly if he'd be able to get close enough to bodily drag him away before getting a glowing fist rammed through his chest in response.

"Fenris."

The elf flinched. " _What_."

"Come on."

"She's _gone_."

Something in the elf's confused, shaking tone threatened to break him. "Fenris. Come on."

The elf complied, the point of his sword dipping. "We're going down there," Fenris hissed.

"What?"

"We're going down there and we're looking."

Varric swallowed against the painful constriction in his throat. "Yes," he said, very quietly. "Right behind you."

* * *

The ruins of the bridge were a chaotic heap of stone and dust and nothing else. Varric scrubbed sweat from his eyes and blinked again. He was aching, he realised, shoulders to the back of his legs and the bruise on the side of his head still throbbed. Beside him, Fenris was as wrung through, dust clinging to his gauntlets and sweat soaking his hair from how he'd thrown himself at the stones, heaving them apart, prying them aside with shaking hands.

Four times he'd tried to grab the elf's arm, and four times he'd been unceremoniously shoved back.

"Fenris," he said wearily. "Stop, will you? You're just – they're not there. They're somewhere else."

Part of him was aware just what it meant – what it might mean – that they'd all, too many of them, just vanished. Fallen off the bridge and into Andraste knew where, or why. This, he thought, was why he should've damn well stayed in Kirkwall, away from magic and demons and rifts and whatever had led to Hawke being hauled into somewhere else.

"I don't understand," Fenris said, his voice forced flat in that way that Varric meant you were pushing it all down, back somewhere behind your heart, because that was the only way to have it make any kind of sense.

"Had to be something Maxwell did. _Had_ to be."

"I thought the mark on his hand _closed_ these rifts."

"It does," Varric heard himself snap. "You've seen it."

Fenris nodded, barely, a dip of his chin.

"But at Haven, he fell _out_ of the Fade, and it was like his hand was on fire with it."

"So?"

"So if he can bring himself out, maybe he can bring them all out, maybe –"

"That does not mean –"

"I don't know _what_ it means," Varric ground out. "Shit. Sorry." Footsteps behind made him turn too fast, his heartbeat lurching. He found himself glaring up at Cullen. "Oh. It's you," he managed stupidly.

"Who went over?" Cullen asked.

"Maxwell. Cassandra, Cole. Bull. Solas. Stroud." He swallowed. "Hawke."

Cullen nodded. "I'm sorry."

"So am I." He shook his head. "Look, they're not here. I don't quite know –"

"You think the mark took them into a rift? _Through_ a rift? Into the Fade?"

"I don't know. I don't know. All I know is that they're not here. We've looked, and, well, we've both looked - Fenris and me - we've looked and haven't found anything or anyone and –"

"Yes," Cullen said, his voice softer, understanding. "I've got men on the way up. They can go over the area as well."

"Thanks. The Wardens?"

"Scared and uncertain, but those that are left have dropped their weapons. I've got Blackwall talking to them."

"Long as he tells them nice things about us," Varric muttered sourly.

"The other rift," Cullen said.

"Erimond's handiwork?"

"It's still not open."

He nodded. "But it might. Lovely. Any good news?"

"The dragon flew off."

"That might just be delayed bad news." He scraped a hand through his hair, the strands tangled and sodden with sweat. He was too aware of how Fenris was sitting, hands crossed over drawn-up knees and his face frighteningly blank. "Sorry. Anything else?"

"Erimond's alive. He's also unhappy, shackled, and about to answer questions whether he wants to or not."

Varric grinned, all teeth. "Is he? Let me know if you want anyone to gut him. I'll be right there. Front of the line."


	2. Chapter 2

_**Part Two**_

Night closed over Adamant, bringing shearing wind off the desert. Varric paused in front of the door, uncertainty warring with the fear that had lodged itself in his chest. He had Hawke's mabari nosing at his hip, a bottle of wine in one hand, and an elf on the other side of the door that he was fairly certain he shouldn't leave alone.

And he had Hawke missing the Maker knew where, and it made him ache.

He'd thought about heading back out into the war camp outside the walls, but then he'd cornered Blackwall and gotten him to push for a couple of rooms, near enough to the courtyard that if anything happened, a runner could find them fast enough.

Painfully, part of him didn't _want_ to go into the room. Didn't want to see the elf's face, not when they'd both heard Hawke go over the edge of the bridge.

Squaring his shoulders, he pushed at the door with his free hand. When it creaked open, lanternlight met him, lining a table and the open casement, and the elf, all coiled. Varric made it bare inches into the room before the elf turned slightly. Very carefully, he laid the bottle on the floor. He was vaguely aware of the mabari stopping behind him, her head lowering cautiously.

The elf's markings flared blue-white. "Get out."

Before he could stop himself, Varric said, "No."

"Out," the elf snarled. "Now."

"No. I'm not going anywhere right now."

Fenris whirled, the air around him buckling and hissing. He clamped one hand over Varric's shoulder, ferociously strong.

"You don't scare me," Varric said, forcing his voice bland. Heart thudding, he kept his hands at his sides, loose and curled. "You never have, elf. Let go of me and we'll talk."

The markings crackled brighter, violent and livid enough that he had to narrow his eyes. The hand over his shoulder tightened, punishingly hard, the elf's fingers seeming to blur. Pushing back the urge to retaliate – shove the elf away, go for the dagger at his belt, swing Bianca out of her harness and slam her into the elf's shoulder, _anything_ – Varric stayed still.

"Fenris," Varric said, very softly. "Fenris. It's me."

Fenris yanked his hand away. Briefly, absurdly, Varric wanted to tell him that it was alright, but it was not alright, couldn't be, not now. Instead, he kept himself still. The elf – _Fenris_ , damn him, he thought, his name was Fenris - and he had known him for years and yes, he trusted him, of course he did.

"I don't," the elf said, his voice shaking. "I don't know what to do."

"I know," Varric said heavily. "Let's start by sitting down."

The look on Fenris' face jolted through him. _Nothing_ in his eyes suddenly, in the sharp angles of his face. Anger, Varric thought, would be better. Caged fury and tightly-wound pacing and every other way he'd ever seen the elf angry, simmering with it.

This was worse. This was emptiness.

Varric moved first, scooping up the bottle and sitting with his back to the wall, just under the window. The mabari padded after him, curling herself uncomfortably close, the weight of her head and paws settling over his leg. Her gaze fixed on the elf, dark eyes unblinking. The damn dog was too sharp, Varric thought. She'd stayed back and _waited_ and briefly he wondered what she'd've done if either him or the elf had gone for weapons.

"She'll come back."

"Will she."

"Damn you, elf. I'm trying to," he said and swallowed when his voice shook.

"And what do you want _me_ to say, Varric? That she will return? How? When? From _where?_ What do you want me to _do?_ "

"I want you to sit down."

The elf gave in, his shoulders slackening. When he sat, it was clumsily, as if all the grace had suddenly bled out of him.

"Hey, Fenris?"

"What?"

"Want to talk?"

" _No_."

He shrugged. "Anything. The weather. Your favourite way to cheat at cards. Or your favourite way to try and cheat."

Pity was not something the elf wanted. It was _never_ something he wanted, Varric knew. For long, silent moments, Varric floundered. He could feel the elf simmering, that bitter anger that was an inch away from grief.

He reached for the wine bottle, unstoppering it. Without looking at the elf, he tipped it back, the wine rich and dark. He passed the bottle across and stubbornly held it in front of the elf's nose until Fenris grabbed it.

"I remember," Varric said, and wondered just what he could say. What he could pull out of smoke and cobble into words, anything at all to shatter the dreadful seething silence. "After we worked out the deal with Bartrand, for a while there I assumed it'd be what it seemed. Business, you know? A deal. All of us getting richer. Then Hawke ups and comes to find me and demands to talk to me. About me and about her. Talk about assuming wrong."

Fenris stayed statue-still.

"Bartrand couldn't stand her. Never could. Her or Bethany," Varric said, deciding he was going to be mulishly stubborn and damn well keep talking. Hawke _then_ , he thought, because he didn't want to – couldn't – let himself think about where she was, where she could possibly be. "But then, he couldn't stand the Hanged Man either. No sense of taste, my brother."

The elf tipped the bottle at him. Varric caught the neck of it.

"Do you know, I remember, years ago, I took myself into the Hanged Man one afternoon. Nothing much to do. Go over some letters Bartrand wanted sorted through. Nothing much. Best kind of day sometimes. And then Hawke comes in. She often did, back then. Still did, later. She'd wanted to talk, and _really_ talk, in that way, you know?"

Fenris nodded silently.

"She just bludgeoned her way into my room and gave me a drink and then another drink and the catch was that I had to listen to her tell me all about you."

"Me?" the elf echoed, bewildered.

"Yes. Don't know what you did to her that day, but the only thing she was talking about was you."

"If it was that long ago – "

Varric laughed, not quite able to stifle himself. "Your face is a picture, elf, you know that? Look. Just saying she was happy. Something about the shocking fact that she'd actually hauled a few laughs out of you. Any other details you can politely keep to yourself."

"Naturally," Fenris said, his mouth shifting into a small smile.

"Of course, I also told her she was going quite thoroughly mad."

"I don't believe you for an instant."

The elf moved again, almost absently, unbuckling his gauntlets and arranging them on the floor. The lanternlight slipped across the twining lyrium marks on his hands until they seemed to shimmer.

Varric had wondered – still wondered, if he admitted it to himself – just how the elf had squared it with himself, the blank roil of _nothing_ that he had in place of too many memories, seething under the wisps of knowledge he'd fiercely knotted together. The pain that Danarius had driven into him, bone and blood and skin, tearing away whoever he had been before.

Unbidden he remembered that day in the tavern, when they'd walked in expecting a trap – what else could it be, with only a handful of coin and a few letters and the elf's sister's name – and found that yes, yes, it was, but with teeth even sharper than Varric had imagined. He thought of how jarringly strange it had been, seeing the elven woman sitting at the table, red-haired and slim, hands twisting against each other. And then she'd turned, and he'd noticed that she had Fenris' eyes, that same deep unwavering green.

"If I had them," Varric said, and pitched his tone light. "I'd make them flicker or flash or whatever it is you with them do just to scare people."

"I do," Fenris said, and Varric could've sworn he was teasing slightly, in that half-buried, dry way he had. "I did it once to Gamlen."

"What?"

"He came up to Hawke's estate so they could talk, play cards. He mentioned that he'd known I was from Tevinter, and that I looked rather strange, and that now I was far too attached to his niece."

"And?"

Shrugging, Fenris said, "He started talking about the markings, and said he had wanted to know about them, so when Hawke smiled at me, you know, that way –"

He grinned. "I know."

"And, well. I scared him speechless."

Varric snorted. "Bet you didn't shut him up for long."

"As I recall, nothing shuts Gamlen up for long."

"Family trait."

" _Varric_ ," Fenris growled.

"Sorry," he said, entirely unapologetic. "And anyway, I didn't know you had that kind of sense of humour buried under all that armour. Metaphorical and literal armour, by the way."

"Don't you have some poor half-finished story somewhere to wrestle into submission?"

"Not right now I don't, so I'm going nowhere, elf. Hate it or like it, all you can do is get used to it."

"Why are you here, Varric?"

"Here in this room? Here putting up with you?"

"Here with the Inquisition."

He sighed. "Really? I was supposed to walk away after the Conclave went sky-high?"

"We walked away."

"That was before," he said tiredly. "And you know, sometimes you just have to keep trying to put the pieces back together after you've made a mess with them."

"At the Conclave," Fenris said. "When did you first know?"

"That everything had gone to shit? About the time the whole temple just dissolved."

Fenris shot him a hard look.

"Alright," he muttered. "Cassandra'd been getting news. Nothing was working. Nothing was holding it all together. Trying to even think about keeping track of which Circles were holding and which weren't and just what the Chantry was trying to even say anymore was insane. It was the sound it made," Varric added, almost absently. "When the temple came apart. It was like it could tear everything open. Made me think of Kirkwall."

"Everything makes you think of Kirkwall."

"Hey, you may have tolerated the place. I happened to not mind it all that much."

Fenris reached for the wine bottle. "That day."

"Not going to forget it any time soon."

"Before it happened, we fought about it," Fenris said flatly. "About the mage."

"Oh, I remember. I think me, Isabela, Gamlen, Corff, every drunkard in the Hanged Man and probably half of Lowtown heard that argument. Or whichever version of that argument it was."

"She wanted to help the mage. She wanted to know whatever it was that he was hiding."

Sourly Varric said, "We all found that out."

"If I knew where she was, I could go after her. If I could find out where she was, I could find her. I feel _helpless_ ," the elf said, as if the words were as painful and shocking as glass dragged over his tongue.

"Fenris."

"I just - I hope," Fenris said.

"I know. I hope so too."

Fenris' eyes were too bright, brimming. He crammed clenched hands against his eyelids and Varric looked away. The elf was too unwavering, too fierce, and he didn't want to see it, the instant that cracked him apart.

He did not move, did not even speak. He could hear the elf breathing, harsh gulping breaths. When the elf shoved one bunched fist against clamped lips, Varric swallowed. He wrestled with himself a heartbeat longer, kept his gaze firmly on the mabari, reached out and grasped the back of the elf's other wrist.

Fenris went abruptly motionless and Varric hoped desperately he hadn't misjudged horrifically. He kept his hand over the elf's wrist, over corded muscle and the odd, raised lines of the lyrium. Even when Fenris' breathing steadied and some of the tension leached out of him, Varric held onto him.

Neither of them slept. Or, Varric thought, if they did, it was in short fitful bursts too close to waking.

Varric stared at the floor and then at the top of the mabari's head. Briefly he wondered if he should move, sit somewhere else, but there was a febrile, locked stillness to the way the elf was sitting and he wasn't sure if he should jolt him out of it.

The knock at the door startled him. Fenris was on his feet in instants, reaching for his sword.

"Varric?" Blackwall's voice, gruff and tired.

"Right here," he answered, and dragged himself upright. Long uneven nights were, he briefly considered, no longer his friend. He yanked the door open, blinking at the swirl of torchlight in the corridor. "What is it?"

"The rift," Blackwall said. "Best if you come see it."

"What's happened?" Fenris snapped.

"It's changing," Blackwall said, the words barely out of his mouth before the elf was darting past him, launching himself out into the corridor.

"Guess we're on our way," Varric muttered, half to himself. Unslinging Bianca, he bolted into the corridor, silently damning the way the elf could move so fast.

Outside, the courtyard was grey with the dawn. The rift hung, the edges of it shimmering, as it were nothing more threatening than blown glass. Varric stared at it, trying to see into it, into whatever it was showing them a useless angle into.

He was aware of the Grey Wardens, swords unsheathed and their attention on the rift. Cullen stood across from them, Blackwall striding up beside him. His gaze skipped past until he saw the elf, his stance all coiled and his head tipped up.

"Fenris," he said, when he'd paused beside the elf. "Alright?"

The elf grunted something, not moving an inch.

The rift surged, or seemed to, the edges of it stretching, curling. Varric settled Bianca into his side and let his hand play over the trigger. Something, he thought, he was damn sure he could see _something_ in the blur of it, something moving, shifting.

"What's happening?" Fenris snapped.

"Don't know. I don't know."

* * *

The ground was trembling under Hawke's boots, slippery and uncertain as the rest of this place was, treacherous. She stumbled, one foot giving way beneath her. Someone caught her and dragged her upright, and she heard Cassandra snarl at her to keep moving, keep going, that they were nearly there, nearly out. Beside her the Inquisitor staggered and desperately she caught his arm. The mark on his hand flared brightly, sputtering, and she winced.

She gulped down a breath, the air – if it even was air – sliding thick and cloudy into her mouth. Another heave of her lungs and she pushed on faster. Somewhere behind them she could hear the clamour of it, of the demon's vast bulk as it toppled.

"There," Cassandra snapped.

"I see it."

The rift, she saw, the corners of it shifting and twisting. The rift the demon had wanted to be pulled through. Another step and then another took her through it, her eyes snapping closed when the rift seemed to ripple around her. The air roared in her ears before her boots hit the ground. Around her, she heard the others, Maxwell swearing and Cassandra snapping at Cole to keep moving, to get away from the rift as it closed.

She heard the shuddering whine of the rift collapsing, folding in onto itself as the Inquisitor wrestled it into nothing.

Her feet ached, she thought absently. Along with her knees, and the back of one leg, and whatever she had done to her shoulder when she had fallen past the seething shape of a demon. There was stone beneath her, wonderfully solid stone, and sunlight slanting across it.

"Hawke?" Fenris said, and she lifted her head fast enough that it hurt because she was suddenly aware that he was _there_.

The way he was looking at her stopped her breath, his face full of uncertainty and hope. She flung herself at him and he met her halfway, pulling her hard against him. He was shaking as much as she was, his breathing harsh and ragged.

"You're here," she mumbled into his neck. He smelled of smoke and blood. "You're alright?"

" _I'm_ alright?" Fenris lifted her chin, his fingers digging into her jaw so he could look at her. His eyes flickered as if was trying to see all of her at once, to see how she was hurt. He touched the blood-matted whorls of her hair, following the leaking scrape that tracked down the side of her neck, disappearing into the torn mess of her collar. His thumbs mapped out her cheekbones, the fluttering pulse in her neck, the blood that clotted one of her ears.

"It's fine. I'm fine," she said. Desperately she clutched at his shoulders, the back of his neck, her hands fitful on him. He was a mess, his leathers scuffed and filthy and his eyes ringed with shadows. "Fenris -"

He kissed her, rough and insistent. "Hawke," he said, his lips sliding against hers. "You taste awful."

She laughed, the sound swallowed when he kissed her again and again, bruisingly hard. Her knees buckled and for a terrible, absurdly amusing moment she thought they would both end up on the ground. Fenris caught her, one arm clamping across her back and the other around her shoulders.

"Never again," he growled. "I couldn't – I didn't know where you were."

"I'm sorry." The words clogged her throat. "I'm so sorry."

"No. I don't mean – " He exhaled sharply. "I was frightened for you."

"So was I," she said, whisper-quiet. She clung to him, to the way he was breathing against her mouth, to the way his arms were clamped around her, painfully tight. She was crying, she realised, or very close to it, her throat all locked up and her eyes stinging. She tasted salt on his lips, his breathing coming ragged.

"I thought I'd lost you."

"No," she said, her eyes closing. "How long were we gone?"

"All of the afternoon. All of the night. Most of this morning."

She swallowed. She leaned into him again, instinctively finding the crook of his shoulder. She felt the sheltering weight of his hand closing over the back of her neck. Slowly she became aware of the noise around them, footsteps and someone shouting for another healer, then Cullen ordering guards to sweep the fortress again, to check for any other rifts.

"I need to move, don't I," Hawke muttered.

"Only if you want to," Fenris answered.

"I don't want to." Reluctantly, she extricated herself from him and made herself look across the courtyard. It was, she thought, somehow treacherously uneventful, the walls flanked by Inquisition soldiers and the sky overhead clear.

"Hawke," Varric said, his voice burred rough. "Alright?"

"Could be better," she said, and saw him smile slightly.

"Could be worse?"

"Could be," she conceded wryly. "Hard to see how."

"Yes."

He opened his mouth again, and she knew that he was going to back away, going to fling his hands up and smirk and talk. Before he could speak, she knelt – awkwardly, her knees protesting – and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him against her.

"Hawke," he said, muffled against her shoulder. "Don't do that again. Seriously. I thought your elf was going to go for my still beating heart by way of my throat."

"I missed you too, Varric."

He smiled, properly this time, the lines in his face easing. "Go get cleaned up, Hawke. You're a mess."

She was about to retort when her mabari shouldered past him and launched solidly into her. Muffling a laugh, Hawke hooked an arm around the dog's thick neck and tried to dodge the rasping swipe of her tongue. The cold press of her nose followed, and then the insistent push of her head, nuzzling up under Hawke's chin.

"See?" Varric said, and coughed. "Even the damn dog agrees with me for once."

* * *

Late afternoon sunlight lanced across the floor and the windowseat. Warm water and rough soap had gotten the worst of the blood and the grime off her skin and out of her hair. Fenris had stayed beside her, his attention lingering over new scrapes and bruises and the long, welling gash under her shoulder that he insisted dragging a healer in to look at. There were other cuts as well, a deeper one on her thigh and two on the back of her calf, and she hated how Fenris' hands had shaken when he had eased her clothes off and seen her.

Two swallows of wine had sent her stomach somersaulting, so instead she had shoved the bottle back at Fenris, grimacing.

Her hair was still damp, tickling against the back of her neck. She had tried to sleep, but the thrumming recollection of just what she had seen in the Fade made her nerves jangle. For long moments, she had simply lain beside Fenris, pressed shoulder to hip to knee against him, her head tilted under his chin. She was in her tunic and nothing else, her thoughts not settling.

With her lips against his throat, she told him about it, most of it as she recalled it, the shifting pathways of the Fade and that wrenching, staggering moment when they had realised that they were _there_ , waking. The figure that may have been the Divine, perhaps, reclothed in light. The demon that had grown heavy and ponderous on fears, and how it clawed its way into their heads.

"To begin with," she said, and swallowed. "I didn't know where we were. In the Fade, certainly, but I couldn't – it was absurd. We were stuck and afraid and all I could think was that there was no way of telling you what had happened."

Wordlessly, he folded his hand over the back of her neck.

"What did you do?"

He sighed, or gulped, maybe both. "Varric made me sit with him. He calmed me down, or tried to."

"Sounds like Varric," she said lightly.

"I lashed out at him," he said, and shook his head.

"He'll understand."

"No, I – there was a moment, just a moment, when I didn't see him." He eased back so he could look at her. "Or didn't want to see him, and all I could think of was how angry I was. I could have hurt him, very badly. There was a moment where I _wanted_ to."

She nodded, because she knew there was nothing she could say, no words that could quite answer that. She knew – achingly she knew – how he still fought with it, the urge to let response turn into blind, furious instinct and retaliate.

"What happened to the dragon?"

"Oh," Fenris said. "It flew away."

"That lucky, are we?"

"Apparently."

Gently she untangled herself from him, swinging her feet onto the floor. She crossed the room twice, her hands twisting against each other, and her thoughts a furious roil.

"Hawke," he said heavily.

"On the bridge," she said, before she could think herself out of it. "It was – the whole thing gave way. I was moving too fast."

Fenris stood, his feet soundless as he padded across the floor. "Yes," he said, snapping the word out, and abruptly she realised he was as restlessly close to anger as she was.

"All I could think, well -"

"What _were_ you thinking?"

The tension in her belly tightened. "Andraste's flaming arse, Fenris. The stone came down under us. I didn't have _time_ to think."

"You could have been killed. Given what happened, in the Fade? You _should_ have been killed." The instant the words were out of his mouth he blanched.

She glared at him. "How could you say something like that?"

"I didn't mean – I meant, I was afraid, and you –"

"How many more times to do you want me to apologise for something that was entirely beyond my control?"

"I don't want you to apologise." His voice was as furious as hers, harsh and clipped.

"Then what do you want?"

"I want – I'm not very good at this," he blurted. "I never have been."

"Tell me what you mean."

"I thought I wouldn't see you again. I thought that the last look I would have of you was you going over the edge of the bridge."

Hawke swallowed. She needed to push it back, she knew, the simmering coil of the anger. It was the Fade, and the demon that had flung barbed words and edged laughter and coaxed them on an exhausting dance through its labyrinth. It was how she had missed Fenris, and how she had been afraid, and when she looked at him again, she could see her own thoughts mirrored in his face.

"Fenris?" she asked, and he was already there, closing his arms around her.

His fingers bit into her hips, hauling her closer. She responded, yanking his head to hers so she could kiss him, so she could taste the inside of his mouth, all heat and desperation. She pulled him closer until her back hit the wall. He kissed her again, savagely, their teeth clicking until she winced.

Fenris jolted back. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright." She rested one hand around the back of his neck. She could feel the steely tension in him. "Fenris. I want – I just need you."

Fiercely, he flattened both hands against the wall, trapping her. She clasped his face and kissed him again and again until she was gasping into his mouth. She was starving for him, for the reminder of him, of how he tasted and how he felt when he was buried to the hilt in her.

They were halfway to the bed when she ran her hands down his chest until she found his belt. She slid her hand lower and felt his shuddering response. Fenris groaned, his hips rolling instinctively. Eyes narrowed, he shoved her tunic up and then off. One of his hands cupped between her thighs, stroking until she ached.

Brokenly she gasped out his name and clung to him. He gave in first, helplessly tumbling them both to the floor, catching her against his chest. When he thrust up into her it was almost painful, her hands clawing at his shoulders. Frantic, she rolled them both over so he was above her, so his whole frame covered hers. So she could feel his strength and his weight and the hard, snapping motion of his hips and _himself_.

Fenris' head dropped against her shoulder. His fingers clamped against her thigh. His back went taut under her hands and she felt his shuddering, half-stifled groan when he came.

"Hawke," he said, his lips moving against her skin.

She let her hands play through his hair, sweat-dewed and thick. "It's alright."

He kissed her chin, then her mouth, messy and slow. As tenderly, he eased out of her. Cradling her against his chest, he let one hand wander down past her belly and then lower until she arched against him. She came hard, hard enough that it made her cry out, her hips bucking against the insistent pressure of his hand.

Afterwards, he coaxed her up from the floor and back onto the bed. There, she pressed as close to him as she could, lying on top of him with her head buried under his chin. His hands strayed through her hair, over her shoulders, down the slope of her back.

Eventually, she shifted so that she could look at him properly. This close, his eyes seemed startlingly green, fringed with thick black lashes. "Not the first time we've dragged ourselves out of trouble," she said softly.

"Even a qunari attack has rules," Fenris responded. " _Especially_ a qunari attack, thinking about it."

"And it still worked out alright."

"True, but as I recall, _you_ were the one who tried to stand up after being almost run through by the Arishok."

She grinned, but the motion of it felt forced. "You know what that's like. You only become aware of it after everything else has stopped."

"Hawke," he said admonishingly. "You were bleeding like a waterfall."

"Why are we talking about the Arishok?"

"Because I can't think about this," he said, his shoulders slumping. "I imagine you in the Fade, _walking, waking_ in the Fade, I imagine you being hurt, and I can't think."

"Fenris."

He shook his head. "I know it was only two days. Less. I didn't know where you were. Not knowing was – I felt helpless."

"I know."

"Hawke," he said. "When you came back through the rift. You asked me if _I_ was alright."

"Noticed that, did you?"

"Why did you say it?"

She laughed unevenly. "The demon. I let its words get into my head and got myself believing."

"Believing?"

"It said you were going to die. I thought – and I know how absurd this sounds – that even if we made it back out, that something would've happened to you while I was gone."

"Hawke."

"It pulled your name out of my head. Or it already knew. Whichever it did it, it _knew_." The words spilled out, relentless and painful. "It knew who you were. It knew where you were from. It knew what you looked like. It knew what you sounded like. It knew everything down to the colour of your eyes and that scar you have on the side of your elbow and how your armour looks."

Fenris folded his arms around her. Lifting his knees, he rolled them sideways so he could cradle her whole body against him.

"I know it's foolish," she said.

"No. It's not."

"Fenris?"

"Yes?"

"I," she said, and stopped. "Corypheus –"

"Is still out there," he said, very quietly. "I know. We might have disrupted his plans but we have not stopped him."

"I have to. Or I have to try. I don't know how yet."

"We can discover how to," he said fiercely.

"I might need to sleep for about three days before even beginning to think about it."

He laughed, the sound of it strained. "Yes."

"I need to see this end."

"Together, we will." His arms tightened around her. "Everything dies. Everything can be hunted. There will be some way. Hawke?"

"Yes?"

"No more falling into the Fade. Promise?"

She looked at him, peering until she saw his faint, tired smile. "I'll try."

"You'd better."

Much later she slept in bits and pieces, often jolting awake. The third time, she woke to the familiar sensation of Fenris, all coiled muscle. He was sitting behind her now, she realised, her head in his lap and one of his hands on her shoulder.

"Fenris?"

"It's alright," he said, and leaned down close enough that he could kiss the top of her head. "Try to sleep. If you want to."

"You'll stay?"

He did not laugh at her or the plaintive, stupidly uncertain note he must have heard in her voice. "I'll stay."

When Hawke woke again – minutes or hours later, she was not sure – her heart was thundering, sweat and half a scream on her lips. She was aware of Fenris, one arm very loosely around her, not pinioning. Because he understood, she thought, and it made her ache. Because he understood that she might need to breathe, no, not to breathe, to gulp down air and let herself shake until her heartbeat had eased.

Teeth gritted, she scraped loose hair away from her face. "Shit."

"I'm here," Fenris said roughly. "I've got you."

Whatever else she wanted to say dissolved into sobs. She turned, pressing her face against him until his throat was gleaming with her tears. When she burrowed hard against him, he tightened his arms around her until they were clinging to each other again.

* * *

When the sun started to set over the war camp, Varric wondered if he could justify stealing a few of the bottles of wine he had seen lurking in the tent the soldiers used for dicing. He still hadn't slept properly, not since he'd seen Hawke stumbling out of the courtyard, leaning too heavily into Fenris and something very like guilt lodging in his own chest.

Instead, he took himself back past the blacksmith and around the dusty square of ground some of the younger recruits used for sparring and towards the rippling rows of tents. Some of the others were still inside the fortress, he knew, Blackwall and Cullen talking and talking to the Wardens, and Solas going over the details of just whatever had happened in the Fade with Maxwell and Cassandra. Outside he'd seen Sera dragging Dorian off to play cards and she'd shouted an invitation at him as they'd passed him, but he'd only shrugged and said something about maybe later, perhaps.

Eventually he found an outcrop, suitably empty and suitably far from the tents, and just sat. Hands over his knees and Bianca on his shoulders and his thoughts all upended.

He'd _asked_ her to damn well come here, he thought viciously. He'd written and he'd almost fucking _begged_ and she'd come and she'd ended up in the Fade, close to lost.

She was breathing, he thought savagely, and that should've been enough, or something at least, to ease the anxious knot behind his ribs. In the courtyard she'd _smiled_ at him, the crazy woman. Not quite able to stand and pretending that she was fine while she was swaying and grey in the face and while Fenris propped her up.

"Varric?"

He flinched out of his thoughts. Twisting, he found himself staring up at Fenris, the elf's posture all uncertain, head down and one hand clenched and a bottle of wine dangling from the other.

"Yes?" he managed helplessly.

The elf hovered a moment longer. "I wondered," he said. "I mean, did you want some company?"

"You bribing me?" Varric asked, and jerked his chin at the bottle.

"If I need to."

"Sit down, then. Been a while since anyone tried to bribe me."

"I'm sure." The elf sat, still awkwardly stiff, placing the bottle between them. Haltingly, he said, "I wanted to apologise."

"I'm pretty sure that for once you don't owe me money."

"When Hawke was gone. The way I acted."

"The way you acted was because you were scared for her," Varric said gently. "I was, too."

"Yes, but – I was angry. I was so angry. _Blindly_ angry and I took it out on you. I'm sorry."

"Stop looking like you want me to put you out of your misery. I understand."

"I could've hurt you very badly."

"Sure, and so could not looking properly the next time I walk down a set of steps, my own penchant for too much cheap ale, or the next time that dragon comes back." Varric smiled. "Damn it, Fenris. I don't need the long version. I got it. You're sorry, I'm fine, we're happy. Like I've already said and don't need to say again, I understand."

Fenris smiled, or half-smiled. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Varric hesitated. "Alright?"

"Of course."

"You're more obstinate than stone, elf."

"Are _you_ alright?"

"Me?" Varric opened his mouth to say something irreverent, swallowed, and changed his mind. "I'll be alright. It was – let's just say I don't quite want to have to feel like that again anytime soon. Hey, Fenris?"

"What?"

"How is she?"

Fenris paused. "Exhausted."

"You think she'll be alright?"

"Yes," the elf said, his voice softer suddenly. "You know her."

"Sure, but I never invited her over to help and then got her dropped in the Fade for her trouble before."

Fenris shoved the bottle roughly into his hands. " _You_ had nothing to do with that."

"Doesn't make it feel any better."

"No," the elf said. "I know what you mean."

* * *

The tent walls rattled with the wind. With a cloth in one hand and a perturbed frown on his face, Varric noticed just how much dust he'd managed to get all over Bianca during the course of one afternoon. Sighing, he gently ran the cloth over the stock.

Footsteps crunched against the sand outside, and Hawke said, "Hey, Varric? Are you busy?"

He grinned before he could help it. "Get in here, Hawke."

She ducked in through the tied-back tent flaps. She was too pale, he thought immediately, her face looking bloodless and drawn under the dark mop of her hair. When she sat across from him, cross-legged, she was still slightly awkward, that stiff movement when you were still not quite sure how smoothly your body was going to respond.

"And just what are you doing up?" he asked genially.

"That's the problem with good healers. They get you up and moving."

"They do."

"Hey," Hawke said, and tapped his knee. "Varric. You alright?"

Varric grinned tiredly. "Apart from where I was on elf-watching duty, it was fine."

She rolled her eyes. "You like him."

"I do like him. Just not when he's glowing and looking like he wants to murder me."

"Sorry."

"No," he said, and shook his head. He leaned back, dropping the cloth onto the ground. "Bad joke. Bad timing. Sorry."

"Thank you," she said. "For staying with him."

"Yes, well. Wasn't like I had anything else pressing that needed looking after."

"And you say _I'm_ stubborn."

"You are," he retorted. "I know it's not the same as what you saw, but it was hard. Seeing you – well, I thought that was it. Might have been it."

"Yes," she said. "I had a few thoughts go that direction as well."

"Hey, look." He knew he had to get the words out, and usually that was easy but right now his throat was drying up. "I'm sorry, Hawke. If I hadn't dragged you out here, this wouldn't've happened."

"You know," she said thoughtfully, and smiled at him. "If we had to apologise for every time we've gotten each other into trouble, I don't think we'd have time to talk about anything else."

Varric laughed, half-choked and surprising himself. "You're not wrong. How's Fenris?"

"He's alright," she said softly. "Or he'll be alright. You know what I mean."

"I do." He hesitated. "I was talking to Cassandra. This thing – the demon?"

"Big bastard," she said, and smiled lopsidedly. "I had no idea they could get that big. Looked like the biggest, ugliest, nastiest spider you could ever think of. Really topped off a great day in the Fade."

Varric snorted. "I'm sure."

"It was clever." Her voice turned speculative. "It knew us. Knew things about us. It knew Fenris' name. Knew who he was."

"Hawke."

"No, it's alright. We hacked the bastard apart. It was just – you _know_ it probably isn't real, but it sounds real, and then you can't think of anything else and it just _stays_ in your head."

He nodded silently.

"I was so frightened," she said. "That I'd make it back, and he wouldn't be there. That something even worse would've happened to him."

"Hawke," he said, gently teasing. "You know I'd never have let anything happen to him. Mainly because I know I'd never hear the end of it from you."

She gulped out a laugh, her eyes a little too bright. "You're damn right you wouldn't hear the end of it."

"I'm always right. You should know that by now."

"Don't flatter yourself too much," she told him drily. "You talked to Maxwell?"

He nodded. "I did. He looked almost worse than you did when he fell out of the rift, if possible."

The memories, Varric thought, that Maxwell'd talked about, the fragments and pieces of just what had happened at the Conclave. That somehow he'd wrenched them back from the demon. That whatever had happened afterwards, in the seething corridors of the Fade, it had been blind, stupid misfortune that he'd stumbled in on Corypheus and the Wardens. Rotten luck and bad timing and damn it but Varric hadn't quite been able to bite back a sympathetic smile when he'd heard.

"He'll be keeping it quiet," Varric said. "For a while, at least. Just muddies things even more. Spirits, visions, walking in the Fade."

"That third part will get out whether we want it to or not."

"True. He'll keep pushing. He has to. This symbol he's becoming, this image – sometimes I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not."

"I know what you mean." Hawke reached past him, ignoring his glare when she hooked up the wineskin he'd left beside his quiver. "Not for me, wading into destiny while marked out as a chosen one."

"No, you just do it anyway."

"I just have an incurable urge to embrace adventure." She tugged the stopped out and tipped the wineskin up.

"You have an incurable urge to throw yourself into the middle of trouble and hope it works out."

"Same difference. Besides, I hear no complaints."

"Not from me, Hawke. Never from me." He hesitated. "I'm glad you're feeling mostly alright."

She laughed. "That's generally what you say when you find out someone's survived a bad hangover."

Half-heartedly he glowered. "You know what I mean."

"I do. And thank you."

He purloined the wineskin and drank. When a familiarly rangy shadow slid across the tent flaps, he said, "Alright, elf. Stop lurking out there. I'm done with the sappy stuff."

Fenris ducked inside, frowning. "I've only just gotten here. And I don't lurk."

"You're capable of lurking in broad daylight," Varric told him solemnly.

The elf shot him a withering look before curling himself beside Hawke. "You're in a good mood."

"Something about surviving a siege intact. Perks me up."

The last stretches of the afternoon rolled into dusk. Outside the tent, footsteps quickened across the sand, and soldiers barked roster orders at subordinates. Messengers hurried past, running fast and hauling torches with them, the light jagging over the ground and through the gap in the tent flaps.

Hawke purloined the wineskin, shook it thoughtfully and said, "Remember when Bartrand's old estate was haunted?"

Varric groaned. "That damn idol."

"I was thinking more where I got hit in the head by a floating vase. _That_ was embarrassing."

"That was funny," he countered. "Really took the edge off how creepy it was."

"Oh, yes," Fenris muttered. "Hilarious. Particularly the part with the golem that didn't quite have edges."

"Says the elf who turns bright blue all over and moves _through_ things," Varric said. "Usually people."

"I don't turn bright blue," Fenris snapped back.

Hawke laughed, her cheeks splotched red from the heat and the wine. "Maybe not quite all over, but you do."

"You," Fenris said, and kissed her lightly. "Are lucky I like you."

Varric laughed, the tension in his shoulders shattering. It was absurd, he knew, but abruptly he was laughing like an idiot before he stole the wineskin back off Hawke. The wine was cheap and too gritty and it flooded his mouth sharply enough that he winced and spluttered.

"That's what you get for thieving." Hawke yanked the wineskin back. "Corypheus still needs a kick in the teeth."

"He's pretty tall," Varric said, and grinned. "Not sure how you'd work out the practical side of that."

"Fine. I could climb him and punch him in the teeth instead," she said, and he heard Fenris sigh resignedly in response.

"You tried that," the elf said drily. "He threw you halfway across the room and tried to set you on fire."

"But he didn't. The fire part, I mean."

"Only just."

Varric took too long unstoppering the wineskin, distracting himself. After he'd lifted it, he said, "I need to finish this."

"The wine?"

"Andraste save me, Hawke. You make me work at this, you know that?" He swallowed again and said, "This. With Corypheus. I'm sorry I carted you both into this, but I have to stay."

"I know," she said gently.

Varric peered over the wineskin and realised they were both damn well looking back at him in that steely way they both had. The elf was probably better at it, he conceded silently, but Hawke was almost as implacable when she put her mind to it. "Alright," he said heavily. "What have you two been talking about that I've missed?"

"We're staying," Fenris said.

"What?"

"For now, anyway," Hawke added. "I want to make this more of a promise than it sounds like, but _for now_ 's about the best we can do."

Varric nodded. "I understand."

"I don't know how we'll do it. But we've already trekked halfway across the world and Corypheus is still skulking around, so we'll stay. Figured we could help."

Varric smiled. "Help with the drinking?"

"It's a start at least."

Varric swallowed, his voice suddenly deserting him and his throat clogging up stupidly. "Yes," he managed uselessly. "Hey, Hawke?"

"Yes?"

"Be good to have you both around for a while."

* * *

Snow billowed against the casement. Hawke glared out at the lashing flakes and silently wished that whoever had first built Skyhold might have had the grace to plant it anywhere else than amid snow-blanketed mountains. Behind her, the fire flickered under the mantelpiece, the mabari occupying a ridiculous amount of space in front, her head on crossed paws and her eyes closed.

"You know," Fenris said, from where he sat on the casement, his legs loosely crossed. "However much you look at it, I suspect it is not going to change."

"Stubborn weather."

He chuckled softly. "I thought you admired tenacity."

"Not when it dumps a whole heap of snow on me when I'm crossing the courtyard, I don't." She hopped up and sat across from him, briefly noticing that his feet were bare.

Fenris tilted his head, his hair shot through with the flamelight. He hesitated before he said, "Your thoughts are chasing you."

"Yes." She looked at the panes, heavy flakes battering against the glass. "I keep thinking of that first time we walked into those rooms in the Warden prison. With the wards?"

Fenris nodded slowly. "The air in there – it was trapped. Wrong."

"Yes."

"Go on," he said, and wound his arms around her waist.

She nestled her head against his shoulder and breathed him in, parchment and cloth and the clean scent of his skin beneath. "I thought it was a trick. I wanted it to be a trick. My father's voice, and those bindings. I hadn't heard his voice for so many years, and it was _him_." She felt his pulse under her lips. "He was connected – forced to be connected - to Corypheus. Even if he never saw what Corypheus was."

"I was there," Fenris said. "He did it for you, and for your mother."

"Yes, I know. I just – I wanted it to not be real. I still want it to be some deception. That it wasn't him and could never have been. Stupid."

"No."

"I don't know if I ever told you this." She shifted so that her face was buried in his hair. "When we got back to Kirkwall, afterwards. I was so angry."

"I knew."

"What?"

"Hawke," he said, and lifted her chin so she could see how he was looking at her, the angles of his face softened into a small, knowing smile.

"Sometimes you're too insightful for your own good."

"Hawke. Every time I came to your estate for days afterwards, you were usually in the courtyard beating some poor, misunderstood collection of straw and sackcloth to a particularly violent death."

She laughed, the sound of it catching in her throat. "True."

Rougher, he added, "You were distant."

"I'm sorry."

"No, I didn't mean it like that. I just meant I could see it in you."

She blinked. "The worst part is how I wanted my mother to be there. So I could shout and snarl at her about what else Father had done. Whether she had known. _What_ she had known. What else he'd hidden from me. From us. And not for her – just for what she could tell me. What else I'd missed. Terrible thing to want."

"No," Fenris said. His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth. "It's not terrible to want answers."

"I hadn't thought about her in weeks," she admitted. "And suddenly I wanted her back and breathing so I could shout at her."

"You were angry. I understand."

"Too angry."

"You hid it."

"Not from you," she remarked.

"Not entirely, no."

"Years ago I'd hear them talking, sometimes, quietly and fiercely. Mother and Father. I always thought it was about Bethany, or whether we would have to keep moving, or I don't know, something else. Foolishly I never asked."

Later, eventually, the wind eased. Close to embers, the fire glowed, and the mabari turned around twice, then again, curling herself close to the warmth. Hawke sat between Fenris' legs, her knees just behind his hips and her ankles linked.

One of his hands slipped up to tangle loosely in her hair before dipping into her collar to trace the hollow of her throat. The other he cupped over her hip, his fingers slipping into the waistband of her breeches. Her hands were as restless, plying through his hair before sliding into his shirt until she could feel his heartbeat under her palm, steady and solid. As if, she thought achingly, they were mapping each other out, reminding each other again of how they felt.

He tilted her face closer to his, barely kissing her, the soft, slight movement enough that she could just feel the shape of his lips. "There will be answers," Fenris said. "Of a sort. And afterwards –"

" – Afterwards we'll find some other dreadful task, need or looming destiny to drag us away to something else," Hawke said gently, and felt him smile in response. "Or we could just go somewhere quiet."

"Kirkwall's never quiet, Hawke."

"I never _said_ Kirkwall."

"You were thinking it."

"Only a little."

Fenris chuckled softly. She took advantage of his parted lips and kissed him properly, slowly.

"You know I'd come with you," he said.

Teasingly, Hawke said, "You mean we wouldn't even get an argument out of it?"

"Not unless you really want one."

"Well," she said, and kissed him again. "I'll let you know."


End file.
